This morning's brunch for the talented crop of Canadian short filmmakers featured at this year's festival allowed wide-eyed newcomers to mingle with established luminaries and everyone in between. The affable Bravo!FACT hosts were on hand to introduce filmmakers to each other, chat, answer questions and most importantly, to encourage everyone to have seconds of the seemingly bottomless supply of fresh juice, eggs, bacon and pastries.

Topics of conversation mostly centered around the films everyone wanted to see, and of course, their nervous excitement at attending their own screenings.

Animator extraordinaire Jesse Rosensweet debated the merits of screening shorts with features versus screening them on their own, with fellow filmmaker Cassandra Nicolaou (pictured above). Rosensweet's Paradise falls in the former category, premiering alongside Just Buried on Sunday Sept. 9, 9:15pm at the Scotiabank Theatre, while Nicolau's Congratulations Daisy Graham is screening as part of the Short Cuts Canada Programme 5 premiering on Tuesday September 11 at 9:45 at the Cumberland.

TIFF-veteran Peter Lynch (Project Grizzly, Cyberman), who went back to his short-filmmaking roots this year with A Short Film About Falling, chatted about future plans with Simon Ennis (pictured right), whose The Canadian Shield will precede the much-hyped Heavy Metal in Baghdad.

Lynch's film will be premiering as part of Short Cuts Canada Programme 1 on Saturday Sept. 8, 4:45pm at the ROM, and Ennis' later that same day at 9:45pm, also at the ROM.

When asked what he was most looking forward to seeing at the festival, Ennis cited fellow Canadian Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg, screening on Saturday Sept 9, 5:00pm at the Varsity.